What we know about Apple Pay usage and adoption?

20 September 2017

Apple Pay, as you know, is an exclusive mobile payment service that can access and use NFC chip built in its iPhone devices, which has been raising concerns and mixed response of the public around the world, as such an exclusive position of Apple Pay is associated with extra fees charged for mobile transactions.

However annoyed iPhone owners may be, being a fan of Apple gadgets means paying the cost and use the mobile payment service through thick and thin, otherwise they would be forced to take two devices in the pocket: iPhone and any non-dictatorial Android device. Thus, the geography and usage density for Apple Pay is directly linked to the use of iPhones across the globe, but it certainly does not mean that all iPhone owners actually use Apple Pay, and here is what we know.

United States

Earlier this year Boston Retail Partners published their report on retailer acceptance of Apple Pay in the United States. The figures showed that by February 2017, 36% of U.S. merchants were accepting Apple Pay, leaving PayPal on the second position with 34% rate of acceptance. Apple reported that at the early launch of Apple Pay in the U.S. the service had about 220,000 participating vendors and last December the company reported that 4 million locations in the U.S. now support it. Still, largest retail chains such as Walmart desist from accepting Apple Pay due to exclusivity terms of its deals.

Meantime, data from Loup Ventures, a research firm, shows that 13% of the estimated 680 million iPhone users across the globe have actually used Apple Pay for making purchases and money transfers. Another research by Creative Strategies reveals that in the United States 40% of consumers are concerned about the security of linking their credit card to iPhone, and 60% of consumers have little to no knowledge about contactless payments.

On the revenue side, Apple’s financial statement for the previous year shows that Apple Pay generated just $30 million in revenues, a drop in the bucket, as all services of the company brought total $24.35 billion.

Australia

Apple Pay’s position in Australia is very controversial, as leading national financial institutions opposed the service disputing Apple’s right to force the use of Apple Pay on customers preventing access to its NFC technology for other developers to enable contactless payments from various competitive mobile banking and payment applications on iPhone.

Despite the battles in the sphere of banking giants, Australian customers are the heaviest users and adopters of Apple Pay as compared to other regions and countries, where Apple Pay is offered. Australians spend in total over $2 billion a week through contactless payments, and Apple notes that Aussie users make more transactions a month on Apple Pay than any other customers across the globe.

Global

Global acceptance of Apple Pay is brighter than in the United States with 3 out of 4 transactions happening on Apple Pay outside the U.S. Today Apple Pay supports payment cards issued in the following countries and territories: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, China, Singapore, Switzerland, France, Hong Kong, Russia, New Zealand, Japan, Spain, Guernsey, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Taiwan, Italy, San Marino, Vatican City, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, United Arab Emirates. Total number of websites accepting Apple Pay makes up 75,562, and some of them include WordPress, Apple, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Telegram, American Express and others.

Figures from Juniper Research suggest that in 2017 Apple Pay will reach 86 million users globally, up from 45 million last year. The aggregate number of mobile payment users for Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay is expected to grow to 150 million users by the year end and 57% of this market will be owned by Apple Pay.